Swimming Lesson
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My mother is teaching me to swim
staying afloat in the clear aqua
is a struggle for her she wants me
to be better than her stirs up
the sand when she goes darkens
the clear and swims like one a them trapped
blue marlin butting and butting my uncle's boat
thrashing the line of the Sunday deep sea killers
trawling in the blood past the reef
one hand on their rods, the other on their Chivas Regal.
In the water where she can stand
she says swim to me now
and I begin the crossing
clumsy laborious spluttering
banging my little bones
the disparate pieces of arm
leg shoulder against the angles
of the deep water, pausing
gulping between splattering on
longing to reach her body's harbour.
As I am about to reach, to rest
"Come on, come come come man," she laughs
and moves further off again
I am tired. Kicking angry. Shicoom. Shicoom.
glugging up through the bubbles
the hard blue for air and the misty sands
blue the water so I never reach the end
this homeless groundless body
struggling not to fight
the water not to trash
to flash streamlined like the conquering
trawler gliding into port.
